The news arrives from Eye on Comics, which has been following recent developments in the case. An online search of Connecticut Superior Court records confirms the guilty plea.

Rivera was arrested in May 2011 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, following a July 2010 incident in which police say he mistakenly gave a funeral home director a thumb drive containing 33 files classified as child pornography instead of the one containing photos of a deceased relative. Police later seized Rivera’s computer and found 153 files of suspected child pornography.

According to Connecticut law, “A person is guilty of possessing child pornography in the second degree when such person knowingly possesses twenty or more but fewer than fifty visual depictions of child pornography.”

As Justiniano, Rivera had penciled such titles as DC Comics’ The Creeper, Day of Vengeance and Countdown to Mystery, as well as Chaos! Comics’ Chastity: Rocked and Evil Ernie: Straight to Hell. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Oct. 5.